'I haven't changed': Jock Ross's journey from bikie boss to firefighter captain

I'm riding a motorcycle behind notorious Comanchero bikie founder Jock Ross.

It's a beautiful autumn day as we wind along the road that hugs the Hawkesbury River, north west of Sydney.

Ironically, I'm in the saddle of my Indian Chieftain - the head of an American Indian adorns the fuel tank. History tells us that the Comancheros were traders from New Mexico who did business with American Indian tribes.

"The bikes don't bring back bad memories for you do they?" I ask Ross when we pull over.

"No," came the emphatic reply.

"Of what happened at the time," I persist.

"No, no, no, no ... just another episode in your life."

Enough said.

Jock Ross was president of the infamous Comanchero motorcycle club in the '70s and '80s. He was their leader when the club split, with the breakaway group forming the Bandidos.

He was there when the two gangs went to war in the carpark of the Viking Tavern at Milperra on Father’s Day 1984. The violence saw seven people killed... among them a 14-year-old girl.

You might wonder why I'm conducting this history lesson.

Well, these days, Jock Ross, now 76 and a grandfather of twelve, is giving back to the community as the Captain of the NSW Rural Fire Station at Spencer.

"You're helping people," he tells me, "that's what you do.”

Ross and his wife of 49 years, Vanessa, moved to the Wiseman's Ferry area after he was released from prison over the Father’s Day massacre.

"We got here in late '93 and, um, the January fires started," Ross remembers.

"All this place was on fire, so I went down to help, and I stayed.

"I'm still there, 25 years later."

The Spencer brigade takes in a large swathe of bushland. The area is so isolated that the RFS is usually the first on the scene of any emergency.

"Well, we've got about 40km of road, Wiseman's Ferry road, so we don't just do fires… wrecked cars, smashed cars, MVA's, trees over the road," Ross says.

"Some of the fires you go to, you might be there for two hours, you might be there for three days."

Vanessa Ross is the Spencer Rural Fire Service call out officer. She dotes on her husband.

"Been with him over 40 years now," she tells me.

"He's always the same as when I first met ... no different."

A couple of weeks back Captain Jock Ross and the Spencer Brigade made headlines, pulling a man and his dog from a burning house.

"Went up to the back of the house," Ross recalls.

Spencer's deputy captain Alison Wade was with him.

"I saw him in the window, so I knew he was in there," Alison told me.

"Unfortunately, his door was locked so I was unable to open the door."

Ross made a snap decision.

"I smashed the door in with my shoulder... smashed the door in and it was black in there.

"It was just full of smoke, s---, so I went in, she followed in. That was real big," Ross says with obvious admiration for his deputy.

"She come in with me and I got him coming out of the end bedroom and grabbed him and dragged him out."

"What would have happened if you and Alison wouldn't have gone in?" I asked him.

"He probably wouldn't be here … him and his dog."

But Jock Ross's past headlines are far more nefarious. The Father's Day massacre was a bloody and murderous showdown.

"It's a shame it happened … that's all … it's a shame it happened," he says.

"I lost a lot of good friends … that's it."

Ross doesn't like talking about that day, but he still has x-rays, which show his body is - to this day - riddled with shotgun pellets.

"Quite a few shots … head, neck, chest, face," Ross explains.

"So, you were lucky to get out of that yourself?" I asked.

"That close yeah," he says, indicating with his thumb and forefinger, "they were shooting me, yeah."

"Did that make you reassess life … surviving that?" I continued.

"It was just another survival … no … carry on."

Jock Ross was born on the tough streets of Glasgow in Scotland.

"You grew up where duty mattered," he tells me.

A stint in the British army as a combat engineer saw him clearing minefields in Libya, Yemen and the Far East - he quickly learned military tactics. Later migrating to Australia, he befriended ostracised diggers returning from Vietnam.

"I came out of the army, came here," he says.

"People come out of the army, especially soldiers coming back from Vietnam back in the '70s, the late '70s … they came, and they were treated like lepers … not real good."

It was the beginning of the Comanchero Motorcycle Club.

"Me, as an ex-soldier, I empathised with them," Ross says

"It was the lifestyle at the time … it were (sic) a family at the time … that's what we were when I was running it. It was a family ... so that's it.

"I taught them how to work as a unit ... we became really good friends and I taught them how to fight."

"Do you regret anything that happened around that time?" I asked - referring to the Father’s Day Massacre.

"It happened. There was no control over it … so it happened … so there's nothing to say about it."

Alison Wade doesn't think about her Captain's past - it's the now that matters to her.

"He's the sort of person who really rallies around to get a team together," she says.

"It's important that we work as a team."

I ask Ross if he's proud of his community work.

"It's just that you are helping people, aren't you," he says.

"Would you have that same attitude back in the '80s?" I ask.

"Yes, I would have. I haven't changed, I'm the same person from there to here."

"So, nothing changed you?"

"No."

And with that we decide it's time to get some wind in our faces.

Riding into battle at Milperra - 35 years ago - seems a world away from riding this region's scenic twists and turns today.

"You can't beat it," Ross tells me.

"Especially on these roads."